Books

How much more proof could we possibly need to prove this law is a worthless sham.

The "news" media has been publicizing the failure of the 1,000-foot ban for years. The ban doesn't work. Murderers ignore the ban. For some reason, still a mystery to the political left, the law doesn't stop people from acting out, and in fact murderers are charged with higher crimes than violation of the 1,000-foot rule. Repeal the feckless gun-free-school zones farce.

The Bill-Clinton-era feel-good do-nothing violation of our rights has accomplished exactly nothing but infringe on the innocent. It makes it a crime for the good people reading Page Nine to have their firearms anywhere near a school (1,000 foot barrier) and has zero effect on mass murderers the "news" media parades around after they commit their horrific crimes. Repeal this abomination without delay.

Unenforceable. A joke. A federal crime against the public. Infringement defined.

B. Teach marksmanship and the link between firearms and liberty in schools.

The public school system has removed certain crucial education from classrooms, so our children are kept hopelessly ignorant of what makes this nation the shining linchpin of freedom on planet Earth. No need to place blame, we all have an understanding of who is at fault. It's time to turn this around with curriculum development, public encouragement, and punishment for censoring or denying the free flow of information in this field to and among students in publicly funded settings.

C. Fix Fix NICS.

The whole idea that the FBI collects the names of tens of millions of innocent Americans, to stop criminals from buying guns at retail, is an idea hatched in a deep dark bad government basement. Instead, the names of the bad guys should be made available to the dealers, like wanted posters, in the far less expensive BIDS system. http://www.gunlaws.com/BIDSvNICS.htm. Short of that, the current Fix NICS plan is a way to send more bad-guy names to the database, using incentives and punishment for the reporting agencies. What's not addressed, the Fix Fix NICS proposal, includes a clean fast cheap way to get off the list if you're one of many false positives (wrongly entered); a way to find out if you're even on, without committing a felony by going into a store to shop; auditing the system and assurance of proper operation; and of course, punishment for improper government use and false listing ("Oh, they would never do that!" Good, then they shouldn't mind including it.).

D. Model Laws.

There are so many, from serious, desperately needed ones at the state and federal level, like an end to frivolous lawsuits by criminals harmed during felonies, to lighter notes for inspiration, like Ammo Stamps for the Indigent, so poor people can practice too. http://www.gunlaws.com/ModelLegislation.htm

If the infringers get something we should too. Using tragedy to manipulate infringement is perverse. Left wingers seek to ban a piece of plastic out of pure frustration.

An open letter to Congress:

Regarding so-called "bump-fire" stocks or "slide-fire stocks" you are currently considering regulating --

1. You have no apparent legitimate delegated authority to regulate these essentially inert plastic/composite firearm accessories.

2. Because a firearm can be fired in "bump-fire" style without these accessories, regulating them is a specious and politically motivated attempt to placate certain elements of the public and political world who do not understand the issue.

3. Pretending to actually "do something," with a move like this, when you are actually doing nothing productive, is a humiliating embarrassment.

4. Regulations here will a) have no effect on psychotic behavior which is the real problem society faces, and b) deliberately masks the true nature of that problem.

5. Your agency should not play into this false narrative or deceptive practice.

6. Arguing that you can't ban other firearms, so you might as well ban these "crumbs" is reprehensible, and should be grounds for your removal from office for infringement.

Author Alan Korwin.

These guys get to have all the machine guns they want. The whole purpose of the Second Amendment is BALANCE OF POWER. Has America lost sight of this crucial principle? We lost this balance in 1986.

Obviously democrats will oppose it. Their guy (BHO) arranged to give Iran nukes Trump says no way no how.

The lamestream media told you:

[Compiled and summarized:] In typical fashion, Trump is being provocative and irrational in his handling of Iran and its nuclear program. He will never get his hair-brained schemes through Congress. Congressional democrats are standing firm in their righteous resistance to his stonewalling and unreasonable demands. In other news he has cut funding to the U.N. causing grievous harm to that fine organization, and causing outrage among our allies.

“Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who voted against the agreement two years ago, said at a hearing Wednesday U.S. interests are best served by keeping the deal and aggressively policing the agreement to ensure Iran doesn't violate the terms.”

“First, it must demand that Iran allow immediate inspections at all sites requested by international inspectors.

“Second, it must ensure that Iran never even comes close to possessing a nuclear weapon.

“Third, unlike the nuclear deal, these provisions must have no expiration date. My policy is to deny Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon—not just for ten years, but forever.

“If Iran does not comply with any of these provisions, American nuclear sanctions would automatically resume.

“Fourth, the legislation must explicitly state in United States law—for the first time—that long-range missile and nuclear weapons programs are inseparable, and that Iran’s development and testing of missiles should be subject to severe sanctions.

“...I also call on all our allies to take stronger steps with us to confront Iran’s other malign activities. Among other actions, our allies should cut off funding to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its militant proxies, and anyone else who contributes to Iran’s support for terrorism. They should designate Hezbollah—in its entirety—as a terrorist organization. They should join us in constraining Iran’s missile development and stopping its proliferation of missiles, especially to Yemen. They should join us in countering Iran’s cyber threats. They should help us deter Iran’s aggression against international shipping. They should pressure the Iranian regime to stop violating its citizens’ rights. And they should not do business with groups that enrich Iran’s dictatorship or fund the Revolutionary Guard and its terrorist proxies.”

After extensive analysis, The Uninvited Ombudsman cannot find any hair-brained ideas here. We do agree though the democrats will do what they can to block it.

Leftists are stunned, seek reparations Oh, wait, reparations are for the Civil War, this is recriminations

The lamestream media told you:

“Two civilian officials with the Marine Corps say their boss, a Marine officer, repeatedly made sexually explicit overtures to them at work, but their complaints to leadership were minimized.” -USA Today

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Aren’t sexually explicit remarks how you find out if a member of the opposite sex might be interested in an intimate relationship with you? What are you supposed to use, telepathy?

When a person “comes on” to you, you do what? Complain to your boss? Or your bosses boss? You rebuff the advance. High schoolers know this. If folks in the Marine Corps don’t we need some reeducation camp time. Americans are getting out of hand with this. Leave it to USA Today to elevate it to the level of national "news." It's not fake (made up and false). It's phony (should never be in the paper, where it is misleading).

The actual charge here apparently amounts to the man, four years ago, becoming aroused by the women and the women noticing this, under his clothing. No contact, just biology at work, at work. How much did he help that along? That part is he-said-she-said, so it can't be resolved. Go ahead, fire your complaints at me for stating the obvious. I am not evaluating a felony assault being ignored, I'm describing a lack of self reliance and toughness needed to deal. Do the Marines maybe have some real problems, like any big tough outfit? Sure. Is this case one of them. Nah.

Look around you—all the “news” stories covering the recent Florida tragedy speak about shooters and shooting. Shooting is not the problem. Murder is the problem.

These aberrant kids have been conditioned into thinking it’s OK to murder their classmates. There are no consequences that matter. Killing is fun. Heaven and hell are pipe dreams. No sense of morality or decent social conduct has been inculcated into their behavior.

Back in the day, no one could have imagined going into a school, or anywhere, and just randomly killing everyone in sight. Where would a person even get such an idea? Where would a person even get such an idea? Read that again. You know the answer. We had the guns, they were even easier to get—no papers at all.

No one in mass media is talking about murder and murderers. Watch. They’re only talking about shooting and shooters. By itself, shooters and shooting is not anything bad—and they know that. Being a shooter and shooting is what good Americans do all the time.

Murder is ugly, too ugly to bear. Murderers are horrible, to be rejected outright by society. No glory in being a murderer. Especially no prize for being a mass murderer. So the media avoids it, and in their conspicuous campaign against private arms, they avoid dealing with the murder angle.

The media are leading the nation down a path of perdition, turning shooters and shooting—people and activities with wonderful, excellent attributes—into targets for fear, loathing and legislative assault. And they’re good at it.

Socialists Have Something to Gain

The political left is jumping for joy at this turn of events. They are using tragedy, as they typically do, to campaign for a favored goal—a goal socialists the world over seek. Disarm the public. Disarm resistance to their rule. The people leading this charge seem like nice people. They seem like they only want to help. They’re all over the airwaves, and in print. And in the schools. They have staged themselves into the White House. Their message oddly enough is identical from all mouths. Take the guns away. This gun, that gun, all guns. At the very least give the government a list of them all.

But by refusing to call a murderer a murderer, and assaulting every decent shooter in America with their words day in and day out, they manipulate the debate, and turn our values upside down. We’re hot on the trail of guns, instead of on the trail of breakdowns in human behavior the media have introduced and fostered, where we should be. They are SO good at that.

Americans, and children in particular, have been exposed to mind-warping mental conditioning for years, and it is taking effect. This stuff, protected by the First Amendment and which “has no effect,” is rearing its head all around you. Don’t act mystified, stumped for a rationale. Accept the obvious. Show children that mass murder is fun and easy, without consequences, and you get what you see. Not from everyone, from the weak ones, which is sufficient. You can’t be exposed to slaughter every night constantly and not have it affect the most susceptible among us.

Call them “shooters,” like in a gallery, show their pictures incessantly (even an idiot knows that’s not “news”) and praise their “accomplishments,” like scores in a ballgame, or a new Guinness book record. Police nationwide understand what copycat crime is, and violence contagion. Media players feign ignorance and keep acting like the criminals’ press agents.

Does it serve any public purpose to hear the names and see the faces of every child murderer who erupted in the past 10 or 20 years? Yes in fact, it does. (Should we say child “shooter” to emphasize the difference?) It gives socialists and their media allies an excuse to campaign even further, pull at even more heartstrings, to build momentum for disarming the public, either incrementally or in one fell swoop.

What To Do

Never again say mass shooter, say mass murderer and be accurate, and precise, and stop denigrating shooters.

Never again say mass shooting, say spree killing, and mass killer, and put the burden on the criminal, not the inanimate gun, as the left would have you do.

It’s not “gun violence,” a cleverly crafted term of art, it’s violent crime and heinous crime, murder, another deranged psychopath, most of whom it turns out are on psychoactive drugs. No one is charged with gun violence, that doesn’t even follow logically. It’s about homicide, murder, how can they justify avoiding it. They cannot.

Dangerous socialists imbedded all over America, politely referred to as “the left,” want to focus everything on precious firearms, to help disarm the public. Encouraging and then using spree killers to advance this cause is pure evil. Now you know. Don’t play into their game by using their loaded vocabulary.

In the dictionary next to "chilling" they should have a picture of it.

Between negligence, fatal disasters, deliberate malfeasance, lack of accountability, secret operations, standard procedures that have no place in a system like the one we think we have, tanks, grenades, this is a wake up call -- or a way to prevent sleep. And they get away with it.

Maybe you know about atomic testing to see what effects radiation will have, or giving people syphilis in labs that imitate German bunker operations, but what about illegal lethal orders, Veterans Affairs officials causing death... can anything be done about it all? Read Dave's new book.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation cannot get enough praise for representing the firearms industry, a crucial American business sector, and staging the Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) show every year.

They celebrated their 40th consecutive year this year, with exhibits stretching for 12.5 miles of aisles. You could see every booth if you spent 22 seconds at each. It defies description, and you can only see it if you're actually in the business, it's not a public show like the NRA Show.

It also differs with 2,500 members of the trade press (like me) and extensive sections for law enforcement and international pavilions. I can save time and skip miles of outdoor clothing, wish I had more time for miles of gun manufacturing gear, and can't get enough fab coffee in the palatial press office with non-stop contacts and info. Let me clue you in with some bullet points.

-- HB 38, the national carry bill Learned: though it made it through the House, got a lot of attention, but may not be the bill that moves. When (if?) the Senate moves its version of a reciprocity bill (S 446), it's the better bill (one page vs. almost nine). It's clean (without some fix NICS problems and the federalized gun-free zones I wrote about last time, http://www.gunlaws.com/PageNineIndex.htm.

-- Gun Confiscations Almost everyone who was asked about what they would do if a Virgin Islands scenario played out here, and armed agents came to your door to confiscate your guns, people said they would lie, insist they were stolen, or they sold the guns, give up a few and keep the rest, hide them real well, dig a hole, leave ahead of time with them, deny ownership, pretend to be out, deny entry (with no thought of how), demand to see a warrant; basically, no resistance offered.

-- See the SHOT Show I considered doing a slide show and commentary as in years past, but NSSF and others do such an amazing job of it, mine is pale by comparison.

In case the official picture shows miss this image, I call it Gort -- a new police fashion statement from Damascus Gear

-- National Training Week becomes National Training MONTH! After encouraging colleagues for a long while, to establish a national training period, the National Shooting Sports Foundation has adopted the month of August to encourage people to go to the range, take friends to the range, introduce people to the shooting sports, you know the drill. Not modeled after the groundbreaking National Training Week, where we celebrate Freedom with Fireworks and Firearms during Fourth of July week, the "Let's Go Shooting" campaign is under development and you'll be seeing and hearing a lot about it in the months to come. shootingsportsmonth.org

-- Fix Fix NICS No time now, consider this a teaser, a lot could be better, including remedies for bad listings and listers, I'll spell it out later.

-- 50-State Women's March on Washington Plans are underway for one female representative of each state to go to D.C. and meet with legislators about their concerns over the Second Amendment. As we all know, men and women are equal, so the women should get equal treatment when they seek meetings, right? June 19 - 20, lots online for The D.C. Project. https://www.agirlandagun.org/dc-project/

-- Alternative Mass Media Convention 9/20/18 Staged just before the Gun Rights Policy Conference, this year at the Hyatt Regency in Rosemont, TX. http://ammcon.org. In cooperation with The Polite Society Podcast and the Self Defense Radio Network. The Second Amendment Foundation, which stages GRPC, is a co-sponsor.

-- New Gun Safety Rules Issued: No Trigger Control Included! NSSF has produced a new booklet, Firearms Safety Depends on You, which omits any mention of trigger control in its 10-step "Basics of Safe Gun Handling" list. Because the 2017 copyright notice forbids reproducing any portion of the 20-page booklet -- like its safety rules! -- without reproducing the whole booklet! I can't show you the rules NSSF has invented. The list, in its ungrammatical format, also has no explicit provision for keeping a loaded gun ready. This one needs to go back to the drawing board. I can't be the only person who noticed this. I sure hope they didn't print too many of these.

-- The LEO Side Advances

I am well aware the threats our nation, and our incredibly brave defenders face, is monumental and growing. Companies like this one, DamascusGear, packed room after room in the LEO section of the SHOT Show, filled with beefy guys who looked like they could wear gear like this and run ten miles. We need these people.

Officer with Armored "Community Relations" Vehicle

One look in Randy Balko's book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, or a cursory glance at the growing militarism of the police state gives the average person the shivers. How do we balance these powers? What would you do if people like this showed up at your door, without cause? Who keeps power like this under control? Serpico (which didn't end when the film did) on steroids, with armor, it's an eye opener.

-- Negligent Entrustment SHOT includes an extensive set of seminars, and no way to attend them all and get anything else done. I attended this one, intrigued by the title, and without going to deeply into an hour of legal thought, FFLs (dealers, not the public) have a duty under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) to be careful about giving or selling a firearm to someone who, despite background checks, apparently shouldn't have one. How do you tell? It's a little gray. Obvious drunks. People who seem suicidal (that was a fascinating exploration). Straw purchasers (amazing how blatant or stupid some of them are, we heard stories). Yes, there's much more to it, this is why you attend. How many people will have even read this far?

-- United State Concealed Carry Association This educational outfit is a continually growing force in the industry, had a presence and banners that couldn't be missed, they were splashed all across the main floor, right next to radio row and the primary escalators between the two main show floors. I've got to tell you, it's an honor to write a column for their Concealed Carry Magazine, and to enjoy the company of the staff members I've gotten to know.

Fake news, n. An article in "news" media that is fabricated, made up, has no bearing on reality, created by agenda-driven partisans with specific goals, who are served by fake stories they invent.

Phony news, n. An article in "news" media from one or more reporters, which appears to be newsworthy but is actually propaganda and spin disguised as news, designed to establish or continue a narrative that seems neutral but actually embeds a prejudice and represents a predetermined perspective or outcome.

Reporters adamantly reject the definition of phony news because, according to critics, they cannot see the truth it contains. In contrast, fake news is a problem everyone recognizes as a problem.

Phony news has dominated so-called "mainstream" reporting for decades, going back to at least when three networks dominated nightly TV newscasts, which many people can now recognize with the passage of time. The relatively new phenomenon of fake news, identified loudly by the present administration, has been a tool of both the radical left and radical right to influence political affairs. Phony news is the more insidious, since it is more difficult to spot and is more influential. Phony news slips into the mind through unconscious channels.

As an example, congressional Senate hopeful Sheriff Joe Arpaio was recently cast, in the lead of a front page article in Gannett's Arizona Republic, as "a hardliner on immigration." This is phony, and knowingly so. He never took much of any stand on U.S. Code Title 8, Immigration, and its lists of who is eligible to immigrate, or why, or who is banned, with extensive lists of people banned from the U.S., This includes money launderers, slave traders, people with communicable diseases, convicted felons, known spies, child molesters and many more, page after page. Sheriff Arpaio was a hardliner on illegal immigration, sneaking past border security, a completely different issue.

This phony spin permeated the balance of the article -- and virtually all news coverage about the man -- establishing a phony narrative that fit a left-wing agenda to denounce his policies, with vitriol spewed incessantly by the left. While it may be true he overstepped legal authority, there is tremendous merit in having borders, ports of entry, passports, a visa system, and criminal sanctions for sneaking into any country unannounced, staying without authorization, using the nation's resources, and living criminally without citizenship "under the radar." This is where Arpaio took a hard line, popular is some quarters, less so in others -- including a blatantly prejudicial media (they deny this bias to this day).

Similar phony coverage dominates the gun issue, for example. Virtually every firearms-related story takes the tack that guns are bad. This is not fake, it's phony. Almost all firearms stories cover nothing but crime, yet firearms comprise the number two participant sport in America (based on sales, ahead of golf, number three, an elitist predominantly rich white pursuit that gets exemplary front page coverage a lot). Firearms are a huge sector of the economy, the trade show for firearms is one of the largest in the nation yet it gets zero play -- and the industry is thankful for this because it knows what the spin would be. Phony from top to bottom.

Fake news is not the big problem, despite that focus in "news" reports. Phony news distorts your thinking, puts emphasis in the wrong places, imbalances the real issues, and the worst part is this: reporters, producers and editors are immune to this message. They can't see it, deny it is real when told, insist fake news is why they have lost credibility, and persist in foisting phony news with no awareness of what they do.

This Uninvited Ombudsman Report, "Page Nine," the page most newspapers refuse to carry (ombudsmen have been fired nationally), has been illuminating phony news since May, 2006, http://www.gunlaws.com/PageNineIndex.htm, long before Mr. Trump introduced the term fake news, co-opting my hard work. He's not wrong, it just sidesteps the larger problem. Go read some of the phony news exposes at that link, and don't plan on getting much sleep that night.

Charges of racism, and stories about diversity, affirmative action, "people of color," and all the rest of the bean-counting racism afflicting our nation come from one side only -- the Democrats, leftists, progressives, and radical proponents of so-called equality, where no one is equal, equality must be enforced, merit is not a fair gauge and individual virtue is frowned upon.

Also missing is the fact that 72% of black children are born out of wedlock, contributing to imbalances, crime, developmental problems and the child welfare mess. Why more colored people, now called people of color to distort the narrative, don't step up to help fix the mess that out-of-wedlock births create, is not discussed in the lengthy cover story. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was not quoted in the story. There is no National Association for the Advancement of People of Color.

Chances that this article here will be called racist for using non-mass-media-approved terminology are substantial. The reply, "What do you mean when you say 'racist' and what does 'racism' mean to you' is typically met with blank stares, confusion, and a variety of answers that don't match, when there are any.

Online definitions, with common threads, do not seem to apply to the terms "colored people" and "people of color," suggesting the terms are mere propaganda and thought control related to political correctness, and not racism, e.g.:

"racism, n., the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races." The makeup of professional sports teams does not count.

racism, n. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others...

NPR: The Ugly, Fascinating History of the Word "Racism": The Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902... Someone is either a racist and therefore an inhuman monster, or they're an actual, complex human being, and therefore, by definition, incapable of being a racist... Merriam Webster gives the date of entry into the language as 1936.

The idea that race, ethnicity, nationality, genetics, gender or even culture and upbringing have no effect on human traits and that all people are perfectly equal doesn't appear to have a name, though it is perfectly clear that all people are not equal. This is commonly confused with the egalitarian idea that all people are justly entitled to equal treatment under the law. It's complicated. Uncomplicated people, often found gathering in the democrat's party, have a hard time with some of these concepts.

A Coast Guard crew seized more than 13 tons of cocaine in what authorities called, "the largest cocaine seizure in maritime history," according to a report in Newsweek in 2017, citing a story from 2001. It was part of an article by Cato Institute EVP David Boaz, pointing out the folly of the failed drug war.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

This is not an article about the drug war -- which you may love, hate, support or want dead. This is a report about the so-called "news" you're getting. Not fake news -- stuff that's invented and false, made up by miscreants or our commie enemies (falsely called Russians to misplace blame).

This is about phony news -- what I've been writing about since 2006, http://www.gunlaws.com/PageNineIndex.htm -- what journalists use to deliberately mislead you and frame public debate to their twisted agenda.

Trump talks about fake news, a real problem, yes. When he's attacked for saying the media is an enemy of America, he's also right, but phony news is the bigger problem.

With AG Jeff Sessions on camera, the Coast Guard recently announced a new record for cocaine seizures at sea, 455,000 pounds, topping last year's record! Hooray for our side! The Coast Guard announced, in 2015, the biggest submarine drug bust, $181 million in cocaine! (No way to compare dollars to pounds, but reporters don't notice, or care.) Boaz goes on to cite the biggest drug bust ever in Brooklyn! Utah! New York! Outside of Florida! $20 million! $73 million! $2 billion! $4 billion! Looks like we're winning at last!

But of course, we're losing miserably. Phony news stories (not fake ones) hide that fact. Is it collusion, conspiracy, incompetence, part of the plan? Will reporters report on that? Fact: They don't. For every bust, many other shipments get through. How do we know? You can buy cocaine all over America, 24 hours a day, at low low sale prices. Some reporters, especially in Hollywood, enjoy the stuff. The farms keep growing, and like bananas, shipments of farm fresh produce keep arriving. A solitary shipment sometimes makes the "news."

This has been a drug report. Gun reports are the same. Same reporters, editors, producers, competence. Now you know it. They don't, even after reading Page Nine.

About the Author

Freelance writer Alan Korwin is a founder and past president of the Arizona Book Publishing Association. With his wife Cheryl he operates Bloomfield Press, the largest producer and distributor of gun-law books in the country. Here writing as "The Uninvited Ombudsman," Alan covers the day's stories as they ought to read. Read more.